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intelligent man would have publicly acknowledged any such anticipations, no priest or preacher was appointed to teach them dogmatically; the rewards and punishments of a future state, as far as such a state pretended to be revealed, had become no more than mere poetic machinery.1

The heathens, then, had no popular belief in a future retribution. Nevertheless, they had their temples, and their altars; their gods were represented by images, and service was done to them by priests and ministers. A comprehensive and intricate ritual prescribed the names and characters of hundreds of divinities, specified their various attributes and functions, interpreted their will, interceded for their favour. He that cometh to God,' says the Christian Scripture, speaking of mankind generally,

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must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.' This is the universal and fundamental condition of religious belief. If the heathens of Rome did thus come to God, even to a God of their own imaginations, with religious service, however blind and carnal, they did then assuredly believe in the Being of God, a God of power and intelligence; and did apprehend in some way, however faintly and imperfectly, the fact of His providential oversight of man. And accordingly the Gospel had to combat not a mere blank negation of all belief, but a living and substantive principle of religion.

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Let me then first place clearly before you the fact that this religious service was really made a matter of conscience, enjoined and enforced by ecclesiastical authorities, accepted and acknowledged by the heart and understanding of the worshippers.

We read how, not many years after the abovementioned debate in the Roman Senate, the factions of the Republic culminated in a great political apostasy. An impious son raised his hand against his parent's bosom. The crossing of the Rubicon, the march of Cæsar upon Rome, was denounced as an act, not of rebellion only, but of impiety and schism. It must be met with human arms indeed, but before human arms were tried, or while human arms were being tried, it might be met also with a solemn religious ceremonyby an act of lustration, of expiation, of national humiliation before the insulted powers of the other world. Policy and religion joined hand in hand. The Consul takes counsel with the Pontiff; the Philosopher enquires of the Augur; they revolve the ancient books, and resort to the prescribed usages, and marshal with one accord a long procession of priests and statesmen, of magistrates and citizens, of Vestals, Salians, and Flamens, to stalk around the sacred inclosure of the city, and purge its dwellings with a holy lustration. The whole population, in an access of superstitious fervour, is moved to appease the national divinities by an act of national devotion. Men and women, young and old, the learned and the vulgar, unite in this solemn function with a common will and conscience.

How far they believed in the idols to which they bowed themselves; how far they duped one another; how far they were duped themselves, who shall say? The scene itself stands before us, a great and impressive fact, a fact surely not without a meaning. The mighty multitude of the greatest of cities, in an age when none believed in a resurrection, none regarded a future retribution, was moved by a common impulse to make this striking demonstration of its religious instincts and spiritual convictions. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact. Whatever abatement we may make from the entire genuineness of the sentiment by which this multitude was animated, we must allow that there did exist, even at this time, among the heathen at Rome a principle of religious belief. Christianity, I say, had a real living enemy to encounter.1

But this, it may be urged, was a sudden outburst of feeling, a paroxysm of alarm, a transient panic of unreflecting superstition. Not so: we may judge of its depth and reality from the marked revival of religious usage, and apparently of actual persuasion, which ensued in the next generation. The conviction of the existence of Powers unseen, on whose due propitiation the safety of the State (in which was enwrapped the safety of every citizen) depended, was still deeply rooted in the heart of the Roman even of this latter age. Choked it might be, and stifled amid the cares of government; forgotten it might be in the turmoil of war; it might be thrust contemptuously aside in the

1 See Note D.

flush of victory and triumph, in the selfish enjoyment of success, amid the orgies of sensual luxury; nevertheless, the stress of circumstances might at any time revive it, the call of an astute or ardent ruler might evoke it. When the religious principle among the Jews of the olden time had been perverted by evil influences, they had fallen away to the snares most tempting to their peculiar weakness, to the idolatries and harlotries of Edom and of Moab. The Romans,

when the same principle was corrupted among them, surrendered themselves to the charm of their most seductive neighbours, the Greeks, and the love of the gods of the Capitol waxed cold under the spell of sceptics, rationalists, and philosophers. But among both Jews and Romans the religious sentiment was again and again revived. The process was alike in both cases; the history seems to repeat itself. The example or command of pious kings effected more than once a religious revival in Israel and Judah. Asa and Hezekiah removed the high places and brake down the images, and restored the worship of the God of their fathers. The people followed in their steps and turned again to the service of Jehovah. And Josiah,' we read, stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments. And all the people stood to the covenant.'1 Such were the acts of the good kings, influenced by pure religious feeling, prompting them

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1 2 Kings xxiii. 3.

to please God by their own conversion, urging them to lead their people to propitiate Him by a willing service. But Jehu, again, is an instance of a wicked king, a politic and selfish man, impelled by mixed and impure motives of gain, or fear, or statecraft, to put on a show of godliness, to effect an imperfect and one-sided reformation. Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel, while at the same time he did not himself depart from the sin of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin.'1

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Now the obligation and responsibility thus felt by the chiefs of Israel and Judah, was confessed not less openly by some of the Roman Emperors. When Rome became a monarchy, the spiritual headship of the people was assumed by the Cæsar as definitely as if he were the anointed of Jehovah. It might be mere craft and policy that induced Augustus to call for a restoration of national religion; he knew well that religion is the safeguard of thrones, and sought doubtless to clench thereby the obedience of his subjects. It might be superstition, for Augustus was the victim of many an abject superstition. Great conquerors, the realizers of great projects—great favourites, as we call them, of fortune, and we almost sanction the sentiment ourselves in calling them so-generally are superstitious. And again, there might be some real belief, some genuine religion in it; for Augustus was too great a man not to be strongly and devoutly impressed with the depth and breadth and height of the mission to

1 2 Kings x. 28, 29.

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